COLD WAR 1945-1970

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COLD WAR1945-1970
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INTRODUCTION

• The Cold War was the state of conflict,
  tension and competition that existed primarily
  between the United States and the Soviet Union
  and those countries' respective allies from the
  mid-1940s to the early 1990s. The conflict was
  expressed through
• Military coalitions
• Espionage
• weapons development
• Invasions
• Propaganda
• Competitive technological development, which
  included the space race.

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• The conflict included
• Costly defense spending
• A massive conventional and nuclear arms race
• Numerous proxy wars the two superpowers never
  fought one another directly.

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Soviet Satellite States

• After annexing several occupied
  countries as Soviet Socialist Republics at the
  end of World War II, other occupied states were
  added to the Eastern Bloc by converting them into
  Soviet satellites states such as East Germany,
  Poland, Hungary, the Czechoslovak Socialist
  Republic, Romania, and Albania
• September 1947, the Soviets created
  Cominform, the purpose of which was to enforce
  orthodoxy within the international communist
  movement and tighten political control over
  Soviet Satellites through coordination of
  communist parties in the Eastern Bloc
• Cominform faced setbacks the following June, when
  the Tito-Stalin split obliged its members to
  expel Yugoslavia, which remained Communist but
  adopted a neutral stance.
• As part of the Soviet domination of Eastern
  Europe, the NKVD, led by Lavrentiy Beria,
  supervised the establishment of Soviet-style
  systems of secret police in the Eastern European
  states, which were supposed to crush
  anti-communist resistance.
• When stirrings of independence emerged among East
  European satellites, Stalin's strategy was to
  deal with those responsible by removing them
  from power, put on trial, imprisoned, and executed

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Marshall Plan and Czechoslovak coup d'état

• Early 1947, the United States unsuccessfully
  attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet
  Union for a plan envisioning an economically
  self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed
  accounting of the industrial plants, good and
  infrastructure already removed by the Soviets.
• June 1947, in accordance with the goals of
  the Truman Doctrine, the United States enacted
  the Marshall Plan, a pledge of economic
  assistance for all European countries willing to
  participate, including the Soviet Union.
• The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic
  and economic systems of Europe and to counter
  perceived threats to Europe's balance of power,
• One month later, Truman signed the National
  Security Act of 1947, creating a unified
  Department of Defenses, the Central Intelligence
  Agency, and the National Security Council. These
  would become the main bureaucracies for US policy
  in the Cold War.

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• Cold-War era European countries that
  received Marshall Plan aid. Red columns showing
  the relative amount of total aid per nation

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• European economic alliances

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Berlin Blockade and Airlift

• The United States and Britain merged together
  their occupation zones in western Germany into
  Bizonia (later "Trizonia" with the addition of
  France's zone).
• As part of the economic rebuilding of
  Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a
  number of Western European governments and the
  United States announced an agreement for a merger
  of western German areas into a federal
  governmental system
• In accordance with the Marshall Plan, they
  began to re-industrialize and rebuild the German
  economy, including the introduction of a new
  Deutsche Mark currency to replace the Reichsmark
  currency that Soviets had debased
• Stalin instituted a blockade preventing
  food, materials and supplies from arriving in
  West Berlin known as the Berlin Blockade, one of
  the first major crises of the Cold War The United
  States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New
  Zealand and several other countries began the
  "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food
  and other provisions.
• The Soviets mounted a public relations
  campaign against the US policy change, communists
  attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948
  preceding large losses therein,300,000 Berliners
  demonstrated urged the international airlift to
  continue,.
• May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the
  blockade of Berlin, permitting the resumption of
  normal shipments to West Berlin.

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NATO

• The US formally allied itself to the Western
  European states in the North Atlantic Treaty of
  April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic
  Treaty Organization (NATO).
• That August, Stalin ordered the detonation
  of the first Soviet atomic device.
• 1948, the US, Britain and France spearheaded
  the establishment of West Germany from the three
  Western zones of occupation in May 1949.
• To counter the Western reorganisation of
  Germany, the Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of
  occupation in Germany the German Democratic
  Republic that October.
• Early 1950s, the US worked for the
  rearmament of West Germany and, in 1955, secured
  its full membership of NATO.
• May 1953, Beria, by then in a government
  post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow
  the reunification of a neutral Germany to prevent
  West Germany's incorporation into NATO

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Radio Free Europe

• A major propaganda effort begun in 1949 that
  was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, dedicated to
  bringing about the peaceful demise of the
  Communist system in the Eastern Bloc.
• Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these
  goals by serving as a surrogate home radio
  station, an alternative to the controlled and
  party-dominated domestic press.
• RFE was a product of some of the most
  prominent architects of America's early Cold War
  strategy, especially those who believed that the
  Cold War would eventually be fought by political
  rather than military means, such as George F.
  Kennan.

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• American policymakers, including Kennan and
  John Foster Dulles, acknowledged that the Cold
  War was in its essence a war of ideas.
• The United States, acting through the CIA,
  funded a long list of projects to counter the
  Communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe
  and the developing world

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Nixon, Brezhnev, and Détente

• Nixon visited the USSR in May and met with
  Soviet leaders, including Brezhnev in Moscow. The
  Strategic Arms Limitation Talks resulted in two
  landmark arms control treaties
• SALT I, the first
  comprehensive limitation pact signed by the two
  superpowers
• Anti-Ballistic Missile
  Treaty, which banned the development of systems
  designed to intercept incoming missiles.
• These aimed to limit the development of
  costly anti-ballistic missiles and nuclear
  missiles.
• Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of
  "peaceful coexistence" and established the
  groundbreaking new policy of détente between the
  two superpowers.
• Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also
  agreed to strengthen their economic ties,
  including agreements for increased trade. As a
  result of their meetings, détente would replace
  the hostility of the Cold War and the two
  countries would live mutually. Meanwhile, these
  developments coincided with the "Ostpoltik" of
  West German Chancellor Brandt. Other agreements
  were concluded to stabilize the situation in
  Europe, culminating in the Helsinki Accords

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• The détente of the 1970s was short-lived.
• The KGB, led by Yuri Andropov, continued to
  persecute distinguished Soviet personalities such
  as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, who were
  criticising the Soviet leadership in harsh terms.
  
• Indirect conflict between the superpowers
  continued through this period of détente in the
  Third World, particularly during political crises
  in the Middle East, Chile, Ethiopia and Angola.
• Although President Carter tried to place
  another limit on the arms race with a SALT II
  agreement in 1979.
• His efforts were undermined by the other
  events that year, including the Iranian
  Revolution and the Nicaraguan Reveloution, which
  both ousted pro-US regimes, and his retaliation
  against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in
  December.